A headless server appliance is a computer system that is designed to operate as a server, but without a keyboard, a mouse (or other pointing device) and a monitor. In general, existing headless server appliances are relatively expensive, in part because they are specialized computing devices, including customized BIOSes that are needed to interact with them for administration purposes.
As can be readily appreciated, administration of server appliances that are based on conventional personal computer hardware cannot be fully accomplished due to basic hardware and software limitations. For example, traditional personal computers have BIOSes that can only display information on a local monitor and can only be controlled by a local keyboard. As a result, changing basic hardware configuration via the BIOS or viewing hardware errors detected by the BIOS can only be done locally, with an attached keyboard and monitor. Note that because the BIOS controls the system boot order, if the primary operating system has become unbootable, or the hard disk holding that operating system has stopped functioning, the system may not be able to boot from another medium without changes in BIOS configuration; as described above, with a conventional BIOS, this can only be accomplished locally.
Further, repairing an existing operating system or recovering data from an unrecoverable system generally requires booting the system with a secondary operating system. This secondary operating system can then be used to access the file system containing the malfunctioning operating system to make repairs or salvage data. The secondary operating system can be stored on internal or external hard drive, on a CD or DVD ROM, floppy disk, USB thumb drive, or other medium. However, booting such a secondary operating system is potentially very difficult on a headless system. For example, such secondary operating systems and the recovery utilities that run on them are generally designed to be used with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor attached.